I Raced a Self-Driving Audi To Defend Humanity's Honor

Robby cuts the wheel toward the apex of Turn 1, corrects a moment of understeer, and powers out to the edge of the track with tires howling. This is a 560-horsepower machine—an Audi RS7—on Sonoma Raceway, a fast road course scrawled across the hills of Napa wine country in northern California. We're on our way to something like a two-minute lap time, which is seriously hauling butt. Robby really knows this car. Actually, Robby is the car.

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Yeah, there's a guy sitting behind the wheel, Audi engineer Markus Hoffmann. But he's not doing anything except holding a kill switch that he'll deploy if he thinks Robby here is about to go Maximum Overdrive on us and destroy the humans. I'm in the passenger seat. Because Robby is loaded down with hardware and electronics that allow him to drive himself, the rest of the car is gutted out, stripped of a backseat and interior trim in the name of weight savings. Audi wants the car and his two passengers to weigh exactly the same as a stock RS7 with only a driver. You see, we're about to have a contest, mano a máquina, and Audi isn't about to handicap its robo race car with extra lard. If I outdrive Robby, it'll be on equal terms.

Racers tell you to drive without emotion, but that's hard to do when the fate of all humankind rests on your lap time.

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Among the world's automakers, Audi is one of the most heavily committed to autonomous research. In 2010, a modified version of its TT sports car developed with Stanford University raced up Pikes Peak by itself. Robby's predecessor, Bobby (both were named after the legendary Unser family of racing fame), drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas earlier this year, 550 miles, with the driver just along for the ride. Audi is working on self-parking cars and will soon debut a production system that allows autonomous highway driving in certain situations. But Robby isn't here to prove a car can recognize a stop sign or change lanes to pass a dawdler. Robby is built to demonstrate that Audi's suite of sensors and software is mature enough to take a fast car to its limits on a diabolical road course. And if it can do that, then there's another layer of confidence when you surrender the wheel on your daily commute. You want to know this thing can drive.

As we make our way around the track, my initial impression is twofold: disbelief that the car is blitzing this track at what feels like 10/10ths, and dismay that I might not be able to match the lap time of this automotive player piano. But as we reach the halfway point of our lap, my sense of sheer sci-fi wonderment gives way to a hint of clinical analysis gleaned from trackday lessons imparted by living, breathing instructors: Robby is fast, but I see how he could be faster.

Robert Kerian

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Where a human driver would try to pick a line and stay on it throughout a corner, the self-steering Audi twitches its wheel with high-frequency corrections, scribbling a sine wave of small inputs. People tend to do that, too, if they're not looking far enough down the track, as short-range focus causes you to drive from point to point instead of thinking about the setup for that corner 200 yards away. If Robby were human, a driving instructor would tell him to keep his eyes up. Camera up, Robby?

"What happens if a deer runs out in front of us?" "We'd hit it."

Riding with Robby is my first lap of Sonoma, and I'm just trying to note which way the corners go, never mind figure out the braking points and racing line. Ol' Robby's definitely got an advantage when it comes to experience. First he took a couple laps and mapped the track with his high-resolution camera, recording the boundaries of the pavement all the way around. With that data stashed, he overlaid a plot of an ideal racing line and began turning laps. But since each track is different, the theoretical best line is sometimes at odds with real-world technique—maybe you want to sacrifice speed on one corner to set up a blazing exit from the one two turns away. "On his own, Robby can get to about 90 percent of his potential best time," Hoffmann says. "To get the rest, we program it in." Command: Override late apex. Initiate trail braking. Deploy max throttle.

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"What happens if a deer runs out in front of us?" I ask as the tach needle bumps the redline and we sail madly over a blind uphill left-hander. "We'd hit it," Hoffmann says. In the name of speed, Robby isn't running radar, because the nature of radar—judging speed to avoid collisions—is at odds with the goal of driving straight toward a wall and hitting the brakes at the last possible moment, as you do before the hairpin at Sonoma's front straight. Robby is fast but dumb. Back in the garage, he probably chugs 10W-40 and pays the Stanford TT to do his homework.

When we return to the pits, our lap time is displayed on a whiteboard: 2:02. That's the time to beat, for the honor of humanity. Since I don't know the track, Audi proffers an equalizer: A hotshoe in its R8 supercar will be my lead. I can follow him and try to ape his lines and braking points, if I can keep up.

Robert Kerian

I try to push it as hard as I can, bearing in mind the peculiarities of the RS7—its torque-vectoring rear differential means you can get on the throttle earlier than you expect, the rear end forcing the front to follow your steering commands. Still, I'm a nervous mess. Racers tell you to drive without emotion, but that's hard to do when the fate of all humankind rests on your lap time. Maybe I'm building this up a little much, but it's hard not to think about this challenge in absolutes: If the robot car is faster, what's the point in screwing around on tracks? Will anyone care about driving skill if it's relegated to the status of long division? I don't need to know how to do long division. I've got a calculator on my phone.

I pull into the pits to see my time on the whiteboard: 1:59. I beat Robby, albeit with an assist from a fellow sentient being. Victory is ours! My inner ear and I have triumphed over the engineering might of one of the world's biggest car companies. And if a deer had run out, I would've swerved. If only Audi could build a robot as talented as I.

Well, the thing is, they will. Whether it's Robby or the next Unsermobile Version 3.0, they're going to make the steering inputs smoother, the braking zones deeper, the racing line a little closer to the hairy edge of the pavement. The story's not over. Which is underscored as we walk over to the wall at the start–finish line, where Robby's "father," Bobby, sits idling. An unseen engineer pushes a button and the white RS7 roars off for a hot lap. With nobody inside to enjoy it.

How Audi's Driverless Sport Sedan Works

Robert Kerian

1. Differential GPS: Relies on a new network of fixed ground-transmitter stations that improve the accuracy of roving satellite receivers. Instead of accuracy measured in feet, we're talking inches.

2. Sensor unit, image-processing unit, control unit: The brains of the operation; they process visual and GPS data.

3. Front 3D camera system: The eyes on the road.

4. Driver: Or, as Audi refers to the person behind ￼￼￼￼￼the wheel, "the final redundant system."